EVENTS
National #TrustLeaders Symposium 2026
Pure Accountability: keeping people and communities at the heart of improvement and innovation.
with Jon Alexander, author of ‘Citizens: why the key to fixing everything is all of us’, and a range of other leading thinkers and practitioners
Trent Vineyard Conference Centre, Nottingham 3rd June 2026
The National #TrustLeaders Symposium is the annual ‘think tank’ event for CEOs, Education Leaders and Operational Leaders of academy trusts and other educational organisations. Previous symposia have welcomed leading societal and educational thinkers, including Sir Michael Barber, James Plunkett, and Dr Steve Munby. This year’s event will be no different – bringing trust leaders together to anticipate, plan, and define their agendas. It’s the event where we connect, imagine, and innovate.
What will the 2026 event focus on?
Accountability is evolving. Our focus as a sector and in society as a whole, is turning more and more towards ‘community informed’ intelligence and involvement as a force for improvement and innovation. We call the outcome of this shift: pure accountability. It’s accountability that is not limited to central oversight and national common measures of success – important though these can be. It’s accountability that is local, real-time, inclusive, and formative in nature. Exceptional leaders are enabling and encouraging pure accountability and harnessing its potential, a shift that is increasingly also reflected across wider sectors and society.
In the current context, we increasingly need to harness the potential of people and communities at the heart of decision making, for informing and contributing to improvement and innovation, and keeping our organisations relevant and impactful in a changing world.
Accountability is no longer dominated by the summative – it is also formative. What does this mean? What does it look like in practice? How can pure accountability be enabled, harnessed and encouraged as one of the most powerful forces for improvement?
Active members of our national CEO, Operations Leaders and Education Leaders networks can now book their place to join this highly engaging and thought-provoking day (memberships must be active as of 3rd June 2026). You must be an active member or partner of Forum Strategy to attend.
At this year’s symposium we will welcome Jon Alexander, author of the acclaimed book ‘Citizens: Why the key to fixing everything is all of us’ to lead a day of cutting-edge, timely and game changing sessions on how organisations thrive. He will be joined by Michael Pain, founder of Forum Strategy and developer of the concept of pure accountability, and Alice Gregson, CEO of Forum Strategy, who works closely with trust leaders to bring pure accountability to life; together with a wide range of workshop contributors providing practical examples of pure accountability in action.
It promises to be a day of inspiration, cutting-edge thinking, connection, and practical ideas and solutions.
All members of Forum Strategy’s CEO, Operations Leaders, and Education Leaders networks, can attend the event and will also receive a copy of the book ‘Citizens: why the key to fixing everything is all of us’ as part of their pre-reading. Attendance is included in all individual memberships of the networks with no extra charge.
To book onto the event, click the button below. You must be an active member of Forum Strategy’s networks to attend (memberships need to be active as of the 3rd June 2026). Books will be sent out to all members in December.
Appearing at the symposium
Jon Alexander
Jon is a strategist, storyteller and connector whose work is devoted to opening the way to a “Citizen Future”: one rooted in the deep truth that all of us are smarter than any of us. Jon began his career with a decade in the advertising industry, winning the prestigious Big Creative Idea of the Year, before making a dramatic change. Driven by a deep need to understand the impact on society of 3,000 commercial messages a day, he gathered three Masters degrees, exploring “Consumer-ism” and its alternatives from every angle. His resulting book CITIZENS: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us was listed by McKinsey as one of its Top 5 Recommended Reads in its Summer Reading Guide 2022, described as “an underground hit” in the Financial Times, and selected by the World Economic Forum for its CEO Book Club. Jon is also a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and the University of Manchester, and sits on the advisory councils of DemocracyNext, the Democracy and Culture Foundation, and the Better Politics Foundation.
Alice Gregson
CEO, Forum Strategy
Alice is the CEO of Forum Strategy and has been with Forum since 2020. Alice has a long career spanning education, adult social care and health, policing and the civil service and is an ILM qualified coach and mentor with a degree and background in Psychology. As CEO of Forum Strategy, Alice leads the organisation day to day at a strategic level, working closely alongside our team, our partners and associates and our highly valued membership.
Sir Steve Lancashire
Chair of National #TrustLeaders CEO Network
Michael Pain
Founder, Forum Strategy
Michael Pain is the founder of Forum Strategy and an entrepreneur, overseeing the development of successful businesses and a national network of well over one hundred Chief Executives. He is a long-standing strategic adviser to CEOs and Chairs, a ‘sought after’ coach to executives, and author of the acclaimed book: ‘Being The CEO‘. In 2021, Michael’s Being The CEO framework was endorsed and published as the template job description for academy trust CEOs by the National Governance Association. Michael is a barrister by training, having been Called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 2007. He is also a co-owner of Satis Education, a sector-leading executive recruitment organisation, and currently chairs the organisation’s Advisory Group.
National #TrustLeaders Symposium 2025
One year in: navigating the change as trusts and as a sector
Read all the details from the 2025 #TrustLeaders Symposium by clicking the button below.